you are, Bobby,” I says, severe as I could, “and if you know what’s good for a kid about your size you’d better turn right ‘round and scoot for home.”
He looked at me as if he would like to know who I was, to be bossin’ him.
“Ho!” he says, “You ain’t my pa. I don’t have to do what you say! I won’t go home for you!”
Marthy was bendin’ over him in a second.
“Bobby,” she says, coaxing-like, “do you know what your folks is going to have for dinner?”
“No’m,” he says, as polite as you please.
“I do,” says the little woman. “Ice cream. And if you git lost you won’t git home in time to git any.”
Bobby looked up the road where he hadn’t explored yet, and then looked back the way he’d come, and then he smiled at Marthy and took off his cap to her.
“Thank you, Missus Smith,” he says.
Marthy laughed as happy as a girl, and kissed him right on his dusty face. She put her arms around him, even, and acted like she had never seen a freckled boy before.
“Nice boy,” I remarked, when Bobby had gone down the road toward town.
“Nice!” says the little woman. “Nice! Is that all you can scrape up to say? Why, there ain’t a dearer child in our end of town than what Bobby is. He’s my sweetheart when you ain’t at home. Hiram,” she says, looking back at him as he paddled along kicking up the dust with his bare toes, “I wonder if we dare take him with us?”
“What about his ice-cream?” I says. “What about having a kid dragging after us all day?” So we went on, but I seen she felt a little mite lonely-like, as you might say. Which was queer.
By ten o’clock we had got far enough from town, and we pushed through a field that was all covered with flowers, and over to where the brook was, with the tangle of trees and brush hiding it, and when I pushed apart the brush to go through, I stopped and motioned for Marthy to come quiet and look.
There, sittin’ on a tree trunk, as quiet as you please, was Teddy Lawrence, with his eyes glued on to his bobber, and thinkin’ of nothing in the world but fish. I’m a right hearty fisher myself, and it done my heart good to see the strictly-business way that kid had. Marthy moved a little, and I put my hand on her to make her keep still.
The boy lifted up his pole and looked at the bait like a regular old hand. He dug a fresh, fat worm out of his can, and fixed it, and then I fairly held my breath. Would he do it? No! But, hold on – yes! He leaned over and spit on the bait to bring luck, just as natural as life! Say, wasn’t that real boy for you? I let the brush come together real quiet, and me and Marthy slipped away.
Well, sir, my five-dollar pole and my two-dollar reel, made me feel sick.
What did I know about fishing, anyhow? I felt right there what was the truth, that all my fishing amounted to was, that I was tryin’ to bring back the joys I used to have when I was a kid, settin’ on a log, happy and lonesome, watchin’ my bottle-cork joggle on the ripples. What was the use? A feller can’t go back to them days. There ain’t nothing to do about it. Unless, of course, he can sort of go forward to them in – well, a feller could sort of live them days over agin in a boy of his own.
“Wallace don’t deserve that boy,” I says, sort of mad about I don’t know what. “What sort of a dad is that old book-worm of a Wallace for a boy that likes to fish like Ted does? I’ll bet Wallace never had a fish pole in his hands since the day he was born. Now, if I had a boy like that I could show him a thing or two about fishing. If I had a boy like that – ”
“Look there!” says Marthy, sudden. “Did you ever see anything sweeter than what that is?”
Over on the other end of the field Ted’s sister was strayin’ around in the flowers, her face all rosy with the fresh air. She was like a butterfly in amongst the butterflies, a mighty pretty girl, and just the age when a mother loves a girl best and when a mother takes the most care of ‘em. I like pretty things as well as the next man does, and I’ll say right here that there was something about that girl that made me feel like I’d like to own her – just like I feel about a real pretty rose, sort of covet to keep it just as it is forever, and take care that it don’t git spoiled any way.
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